


confetti from the sky

by zukoscomet



Series: roots and wings [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Mentions of miscarriage, Rain, Steambabies - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28262625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zukoscomet/pseuds/zukoscomet
Summary: For all the thirty-two years of his life he’d lived so far, it had always rained on his birthday. Like confetti from the sky, his mother used to say to him when he was young and pouting about being trapped indoors on his special day.Or: the rain always comes on Zuko's birthday, but it's not so bad anymore.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: roots and wings [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934692
Comments: 8
Kudos: 94





	confetti from the sky

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's procrastinating on TLSY again, ha ha... not really. Chapter 5 is almost done, just putting in some connective scenes and finishing off a couple of gaps. I finished my last essay for university so now I have all day to work on it tomorrow so hopefully it'll be done just in time for Christmas Eve. In the meantime, please enjoy this random little piece I thought of today, set about six years on from TLSY.
> 
> Merry Christmas!

For all the thirty-two years of his life he’d lived so far, it had always rained on his birthday. Like confetti from the sky, his mother used to say to him when he was young and pouting about being trapped indoors on his special day.

Ursa also told him frequently that on the day he was born, the rain had lashed against the windows of the birthing suite with such ferocity that she’d had the curtains closed for fear that the glass would shatter. Babies being born in rainstorms was an omen of bad luck in the Fire Nation. Superstition told that it dampened the kindling flame in the infant. Perhaps that was why his father had been so adamantly convinced that he wasn’t a firebender. Even when he had produced sparks for the first time, the annual deluge unleashed on his birthday might have offered a fitting explanation for his shortcomings.

As a child, the pattern had felt like the end of the world when his celebrations were confined to one of the halls year on year - especially when Azula’s birthdays always seemed to be bathed in glorious sunshine.

As an adult, he was thankful for it, if only because of the joy that the rain brought to his wife.

Zuko would never have thought that watching Katara bend rain could get any more impressive than the first time he’d seen her do it - in the middle of nowhere with seemingly the whole world hanging on her shoulders alongside her pain - but somehow she proved him wrong every single time. The sight of her whirling under the dark clouds, the incredible force of a storm bent to her every will, the power she wielded with even the smallest of gestures, or sometimes how she would just stand so perfectly still and let the water flow over her body, made him fall in love with her again and again.

His thirty-third year seemed set to begin tomorrow with the same setting as every year, as his eyes tracked the mass of ominous black clouds beginning to gather on the horizon.

A pronounced tug at the bottom of his robe distracted him from his thoughts.

“Papa.” His youngest was as close to him as she could get without standing on his feet, hands twined behind her back as she looked up hopefully. “Up, up?”

They weren’t really sure why Shira called him that, nor where she’d picked it up from. Kai and Izumi had only ever named him by the variants beginning with D - stumbling over the syllables of Dada as infants, honing it into Daddy ready for their toddler years. Kai had matured far enough to start calling him Dad in the past year. Naturally, Izumi had began copying her brother, though she would still occasionally revert back to Daddy in certain conditions. Sometimes the regression was genuinely motivated, like at times when she was scared or upset and wanting his comfort. Most of the time, though, she used it as a weapon against her soft-touch of a father to get out of trouble or to ply him for something that her mom had already said no to. Under no circumstances had never they ever called him Papa, and neither he or Katara or anybody else in the family had referred to him as such in Shira’s presence either, and yet the first word out of her mouth had been Papa. Bemused though he was by it, Zuko wasn’t complaining.

He absolutely _adored_ it when she called him that.

“Papa, cuddle.” Shira demanded as he lifted her up onto his hip as requested. She threw her arms around his neck, stretching high to reach over the pikes of his shoulder piece. Zuko obliged by squeezing her into his side, kissing the crown of her inky black head.

Zuko knew the drill. Whereas Kai had always been on the soft and sensitive side, seeking out affection as often as he gave it, both of their daughters were fiercely independent - Shira the more so out of the pair, even at her tender age. She would happily come to him for a hug, but only on the unspoken condition that he immediately let her go back on her travels the minute she was done. This time, though, when she released her hold on him and he went to set her down, she fought.

“No!” The toddler wriggled in his hands as he tried to slide her from his hip. “Papa, hold.”

“Don’t you wanna go and play with Grandpa Ikem, Auntie Kiyi and Izumi?” he asked her, an eye on the elder princess as she sat with her aunt and her grandfather, listening intently as Ikem spun _Love Amongst the Dragons_ for her for what had to be the hundredth time in the six short years of her life.

“No.” she murmured, azure eyes blinking up at him with a severity far older than her two years. “Stay with Papa.”

“Okay. Stay with Papa.” he echoed, shifting her into a more comfortable carry, sitting her in the crook of his elbow and leaned against his chest.

Even with her initial refusal, Zuko had expected Shira to change her mind about hanging out with him sooner rather than later, especially when Ikem, Kiyi and Izumi pulled out the box full of dress-up things. Despite her stern disposition, Shira had always had a keen eye for pretty things but she didn’t move, head lolling on the hard plane of his shoulder pad contentedly. For a moment, it was just the two of them in companionable silence, before he felt a hand brush against his back. A familiar, gentle voice came from behind him.

“Are you feeling okay, Shira, sweetie?”

Zuko turned to glance over Shira’s head and spotted his wife, pressing the back of her hand to her youngest baby’s forehead.

“Uh huh. Not sick, Mama. Promise.”

Katara smiled as she came round to stand at his side. “You just wanna cuddle with your Papa?”

“Uh huh.” Shira said again, her voice muffled as she rubbed her cheek against Zuko’s shoulder. “Papa went away for long time and I miss him.” 

“I was only gone for one day, duckling.” 

“Too long.” 

Zuko’s brow furrowed with concern. Finding out that his children had missed him was always a double-edged sword. In one way, he found it reassuring to hear that they loved him so much as to feel his absence even in short windows, but troubling for him in an other as it meant he was causing them a measure of distress whenever he went away without them. Despite his best efforts to keep such occasions limited, they were still a more frequent occurrence for their family than they were for most. “ _Did_ she miss me?”

Katara shook her head. “In the best way possible, I don’t think she even noticed you were gone until after you’d already come back.”

Shira lifted her head in outrage as Zuko chuckled. “No, Mama! Did notice!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Did miss Papa!”

As she became the recipient of the deep frown creasing up Shira’s entire face, Katara was reminded again of just how much she favoured Zuko. When she’d given birth, the balance between she and Zuko in their daughter’s features had seemed to be fairly even. Of course, they’d been quick to learn that Shira shared her father’s temperament - stubborn, shy, pensive, and so incredibly serious - but now the physical scales were also tipping more towards Zuko with each passing day. The chubby cheeks she’d arrived into the world with were beginning to disappear, revealing a replica of Zuko’s facial structure waiting beneath - long, narrow and sharp - accentuating her black hair and almond-shaped eyes all the more. It was mostly in her expressions that the resemblance sprung out at her though; their scowls and smiles, laughs and frowns, and everything in between, were identical.

“I know you did. I missed you, too.” Zuko shushed the princess. With one final look of betrayal shot at Katara, she relaxed against him once more, her little body becoming suspiciously slack in his arms. “Are you tired, Shira? Wanna come and take a nap with me before dinner?”

“No.” Shira answered immediately. “No nap.”

Her adamance was all too familiar. While she was passably good during night, and neither he nor Katara would ever take that for granted after having endured two years of sleepless hell with Izumi, their thirdborn would virtually never sleep while the sun was up. Nonetheless, Zuko tried to weaponise her unusually clingy mood to tempt her anyway, letting out an exaggerated yawn. “I want one.”

“No.” She swivelled around to look around for her elder siblings before turning back to him and pointing in their general direction. “Go play.”

Zuko crouched low in resignation. “Off you go then.”

Shira paused when he lowered her onto the grass lawn, a fist stuffed in her mouth as she wavered between dress-up with Izumi or ploughing into the ensemble of appetiser plates the staff were laying out over with Ursa, Iroh, Kai and now Druk skulking over in the hope of some charitable pickings. Neither parent was surprised when she set foot in the direction of the food. If there was one thing that Zuko hadn’t managed to influence his daughter on, it had to be the ferocious appetite that had clearly come from Uncle Sokka.

“You know,” Katara said thoughtfully as they watched their youngest toddle away from them. “It’s totally unjust that my one waterbender child is turning out exactly like you.”

“You took my firebenders from me.” Zuko shrugged. “It’s only fair.”

“I did no such thing!” Katara retorted in an affronted tone, hands planted on her hips. “Kai is almost a mirror image of you and Izumi looks as much like Azula and Ursa as she does me.”

“Yes, but they both have your character. The two different sides to it, atleast. It’s like having a duplicate of you split into two little bodies whose life’s work is to terrorise me twenty-four-seven.” he argued back at his wife. “Shira is the concessionary child - you get one than can waterbend and I get one that has a bit more of my personality.”

“That is so not true!”

He tipped his head in the direction of their elder children. Kai had split off from his group with Ursa, Druk and Uncle Iroh to come and collect Shira. The seven-year old crouched to straighten his littlest sister’s silver flame headpiece for her, took her hand in his own and began shepherding her over to the rest of the family like a mother hen. A few paces away, Izumi was thoroughly chastising Ikem for accidentally inferring that only the Dragon Emperor could be in charge in their theatre-inspired game. Katara could be heard in the volume and authority of her daughter’s tone and seen in her posture - arms folded across her torso, back straight and chin tilted up defiantly as she lectured her grandfather that girl dragons were just as good at being leaders as boy ones.

Zuko raised a knowing eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

“Shut up.” She scowled. “Maybe - just _maybe_ \- you have a point, but I’m still mad at you for stealing away my waterbender.”

“Well, I do apologise for _my_ genetics being present in _my_ child. Honest mistake.”

Katara stuck her tongue out at him pettily. “You’re letting me have the next one. I want a nice, quiet, sweet little waterbender.”

It was still jarring to hear Katara so boldly suggest that she wanted another child from him. Though they had agreed on, planned and enthusiastically tried for a fourth addition to their family for a while, her miscarriage in the spring of last year had derailed those plans catastrophically. They’d both taken the loss hard, but the trauma of experiencing it alone while Zuko had been overseas had plunged Katara into a pit of grief so deep it had taken the remainder of the year for her to come back to life. After that, asking her to chance putting herself through that again had been intolerable so he said nothing, grieved for their dream of a fourth child alongside the real one they’d lost, and let it go. Zuko didn’t mind. If Katara had wanted to stop with Kai, he’d have been perfectly content with his little family of three, so he already had far more than he needed. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny that when Katara had hesitantly asked him if he wanted to try again some day, he’d been thrilled at the prospect.

“So you _don’t_ want one like you, then? You’re confusing me, Katara.”

She dug her elbow into his side playfully.

Zuko smiled at her. “You may want to lower your expectations a little. No matter what side of the family tree he or she might take after, you and I will never produce a quiet child. I don’t think it’s biologically possible.”

She threaded her arm through his, resting her head on him. “Not unless they take after Iroh.”

“If you think Uncle is quiet then you clearly haven’t lived on a ship with him for three years.” Zuko scoffed. “He never _stops_ talking. That’s where Izumi gets it from.”

“I heard that, Zuko! If I wasn’t such a good talker, the crew would have tossed you overboard in the first year!” Iroh exclaimed from across the garden, a vaguely indignant eyebrow quirked as Shira settled on his knee, a kebab stick of pineapple and cheese longer than her entire arm clenched in her fist.

“I think Sokka might be to blame for Zumi’s volume, too.” Katara offered her father-in-law in all but name as appeasement along with her laugh.

“You know I’m gonna tell him that.” Zuko warned.

Katara wasn’t at all intimidated. “Have at it, Fire Lord. It would just validate his claim that he lives on through our kids purely for the sake of tormenting you forever.”

“Not exactly. I’ve been told many, many times that one day you and I will have a son that’s just like him - physically _and_ characteristically - and that will be my karmic revenge for seducing his sister.” Zuko considered that for a moment. “On second thoughts, maybe we shouldn’t have another baby after all. I don’t want to risk fathering a second Sokka. I’m not ready for that. The _world’s_ not ready for that.”

“I wouldn’t worry. Sokka’s got it all wrong. If there was any seduction going on between us back then, it definitely would have been from me to you, not the other way around. You’re too awkward to have come onto me.”

“I’m not awkward. Not anymore. I’m a grown man.”

“Oh sure. Remember what happened when we first started trying for Shira?”

Zuko immediately flushed scarlet at the memory. 

After their first two children had both come as surprises, it had been rather novel to get to meticulously organise everything like they’d done with Shira. They'd even gone so far as to schedule _when_ they were going to get Katara pregnant - in the middle of the year so she could avoid carrying heavily through the heat of the Fire Nation summer and give birth in the cool of winter, and so their third child’s arrival would be distanced from Kai, Izumi and Zuko’s birthdays which were all barely a month apart. Zuko had admittedly revelled in the element of control during the planning stage of things, but when it had come down to playing his initial role in fulfilling those plans, the pressure and magnitude of what he was supposed to be doing had gotten to him.

_“For the spirits’ sake, Zuko, literally all I'm asking you to do is enjoy yourself. You’ve already done this twice!”  
_

_“It’s not the same, I wasn’t trying!”_

Needless to say, he’d gotten over his carnal stage-fright, but those first few times he’d spent too wrapped up in his own head for anything to happen between them had been mortifying for him. 

At the time, Katara had been caught somewhere between amusement at his irrational nerves and the frustrations provoked by her body. Now, though, it was just funny as she openly laughed at him. “Only you could overthink something like that.”

“If you’re going to overthink anything, then surely it should be the making of another human being that you have to love, protect and be responsible for for the rest of your life.” he pointed out.

Katara just smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “I might have let you have that one if you didn’t overthink literally everything.”

“I overthink things because Uncle told me I didn’t think things through enough! I can’t win.”

“Is everything going to be my fault today, nephew?” 

“Yes! Yes, it is! I’ve decided.” Zuko huffed, folding his arms across his chest. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, so therefore nothing can be my fault for this entire week.”

“As the Fire Lord decrees.” Katara sunk into a mock curtsy as the rest of the family giggled. 

Izumi flounced over in her Empress dress, the aqua blue and gossamer-hemmed skirts swirling around her like a maelstrom as she came to a halt before her parents.

“How old are you gonna be, Dad?”

Zuko knew he was setting himself up for a fall but like so many other times in his life, he couldn’t help himself. “How old do _you_ think I’m gonna be?”

“Uhh-” Princess Izumi took a second to consider the question, big golden eyes looking up to the sky as she worked through some kind of rationale in her six-year old brain. She only had a few clues to work with; she knew that he was older than Mom, Auntie Azula, Auntie Toph and Uncle Aang, but not Uncle Sokka and Aunt Suki, that he’d become Fire Lord in the Year 100, and that her parents had been married for ten years. Finally, she hazarded a guess. “Forty? Fifty?”

That was so much worse than what he’d been expecting to hear. 

He didn’t even have _greys_ yet, though admittedly the stubble on his face when he neglected the razor blade for a day or two was suspiciously peppery.

“I’m not that old yet, Empress.” Izumi shrieked as he suddenly snatched her up from the ground. Her body crumpled against him with peals of laughter as he squeezed his fingertips to the weak spots at her sides.

When he finally let up on the tickling, Izumi leaned away in his arms, gripping onto him with her legs slung over his hips on either side and ankles crossed at the small of his back. She tipped up the little dragon mask to rest over her dark curls and revealed her face. Head tilted to the side, her cheeks were rosy red from the excitement as her curious eyes studied his face with a thoughtful look.

“What are you thinking, Zum?” he asked her as she stared.

She stayed paused for a moment before she reached forward and patted his scarred cheek with her delicate little hand.

“I’ll still love you when you’re wrinkly and grey, Dad, I promise. Even if you get all grumpy and shouty like Master Jeong Jeong.” she declared.

Zuko smiled as she sat back in his arms, clearly thrilled with her magnanimousness.

“Thanks, Izumi. Much appreciated.”


End file.
